Bagpipes

The bagpipes are a musical instrument. They are sometimes just called "pipes". They have a bag that holds air. The player keeps the bag full of air by blowing into it with a tube or pumping it with a bellows. To make music, the bag is pressed and the air comes out through a kind of flute or "chanter". There are usually one or more other tubes coming from the bag that make sounds whenever the bag is squeezed, called "drones". Each drone normally plays a different note, and stays on the same note the whole time it is playing, to play a harmony with the "chanter". The sounds are made by a single or, more commonly, double reed which vibrates when air is blown over it.

Scotland is traditionally linked to the bagpipes, and many pipe tunes come from there. Many, many other places, however, also have different types of bagpipes: over all of Europe, some of North Africa, and into the Middle East.

The Scottish pipes, the Great Pipe, or piob-mohr, first had only one drone pipe. The second pipe was added in the mid 1500's and the third pipe was added in the 1700s.[1]